


In Memoriam

by blackwyvern



Category: Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles (TV 2012)
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-05-11
Updated: 2015-05-11
Packaged: 2018-03-30 00:53:35
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,865
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/3917101
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/blackwyvern/pseuds/blackwyvern
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>When Raph wakes up after a head injury nothing is as it seems.</p>
            </blockquote>





	In Memoriam

**Author's Note:**

> Disclaimer : Not mine, I'm not making any money here.

The lair is quiet this morning, an unnerving level of silence not typically achieved by an inhabited place. Particularly one with a family member as loud as Mikey. The sheer coldness from the lack of sound unnerves Raph as he slips out his bedroom door. By now Leo should be up and already moving, early riser that he is. As Raph strains his ears into that dead pan silence while traversing the lair he can hear it, the unnerving quiet finally broken by the steady sounds of Leo's practice.

Raph pauses, standing still at the foot of the steps. The dojo door is closed but he can see Leo's shadow moving across the floor in graceful arcs. His head aches, a momentarily intense burst of lighting across his temples. Raph rubs it away in irritation, he didn't sleep well at all, tossing and turning well into the early morning. 

Today is bound to be an uphill battle from the sleep deprivation and with a sigh he continues onward leaving the dojo behind.

Entering the kitchen Raph makes a bee line for the coffee pot. Coffee is really more Donnie's thing, but in extreme cases of insomnia Raph has resorted to it. After training he expects to fall on his nose right back into bed and if anyone gets in his way Raph refuses to be responsible for the consequences. 

Oddly the coffee maker stands unused this morning. Leo always makes coffee as part of his morning routine, not for himself, he hates the stuff, but for Donnie. It's the quickest way to get the genius functional in the morning, and Raph too on occasions like today.

Raph shrugs, letting the niggling twist in his guts pass. He reaches for the canister of ground coffee and stifles a yawn. Donnie had tried to lecture Leo once that fresh whole beans were better but had lost the argument when Leo pointed out that beans need grinding and unless Donnie wanted the whole lair, including himself woken up by a grinder at five in the morning ground will have to do. Grudgingly the genius had agreed and Raph was thankful for that. Both of them had enough trouble sleeping even without a grinder waking them up. 

While waiting for the pot to finish brewing Mikey stumbled bleary eyed into the kitchen. His youngest brother stops dead in his tracks as he sees Raph, blue eyes widening impossibly huge. For a moment something seems to twist, the sharp pain returning, assaulting Raph's temples with all the vengeance of a smith's hammer. He rubs at his temples again, eyes blurring slightly obscuring his surroundings in a haze of white. Raph covers his face, digging the heels of palms into his eyes. The pain begins to die down to a dull roaring ache behind his eyes.

"Raph you okay? You don't look so good."

"M'fine," Raph says, waving off his well meaning little brother, "just a headache."

"Dude that sucks." Mikey replies, already rummaging through the fridge.

His brother seems...subdued, quieter then usual. Typically Mikey is an obnoxious morning person, humming and bouncing everywhere as he goes about making breakfast. His tunes are typically random, mish mashes of his own made up lyrics and the odd radio song or five. Raph strains to remember Mikey's favorite, the one he made up that he's been singing for just over a week now and just as his mind catches on it Mikey begins to hum it. It's slightly off key, as he pulls bacon and eggs from the fridge. He dances to the rhythm, if you can call it that, and begins pulling other ingredients from the shelves haphazardly. How anything ever manages to get cooked always seems like a miracle. 

"No hot sauce this time." Raph growls as he fills two cups with the recently brewed coffee.

Laughing Mikey gives a thumbs up as Raph exits the kitchen. The humming of his tune oddly fading out as Raph crosses the lair to the lab door. 

It's ajar this morning, not uncommon for Donnie. "Hey genius?" Raph calls out as he slips inside, "you fall asleep again?"

He pauses, his breath hitching momentarily as he takes in the surrounding scene. The lab is dark, silent and hollow feeling, broken glass and spilled chemicals smeared across the cement. The pain behind Raph's eyes rises again firing along his nerves in striking lashes this time. He hisses, biting his lip and fighting down the wave of accompanying nausea. 

"Donnie?" A flash of panic threatens to choke him as nothing but silence greets his ears.

A click loud and sharp breaches the air, the lights humming to life above as Donnie rises from a cot pushed far in the back of his work space. "Huh? What is it?" Donnie yawns, rubbing at sleep fogged eyes that still threaten to drop closed.

Raph's heart begins a slow crash back to normal speed and the pain once again recedes to throbbing ache behind his eyes. He looks over the wrecked look lab, taking in every misaligned beaker and broken glass shard in Donnie's usually perfect enviroment. "What happened? Looks like a war zone."

Donnie takes the offered cup with a groan. "Mikey." He huffs, downing a sip. He makes a face which is a bit uncharacteristic but Raph shrugs it off, he probably made the coffee too strong. "You should've seen it last night.” Donnie continues, sipping again. “I finally crashed on the cot after getting the back half clean."

"Surprised I didn't hear it."

"We'll you were pretty out of it last night."

"Yeah...." Raph trails off. There's a hole in his memory from last night. Just a black blank spot worse then the time he and Casey drank themselves stupid. That at least had flashes, sounds, smells, traces of memory...this is nothing. Like his mind fell into a black hole after they left the lair. There was something important though, something that happened. He can't see the shape of it, but there's an echo, too faint to hear, too dim to see...

"Hey Donnie..."

"Yeah?"

"What did happen....last night."

"You don't remember?"

"No it's just kinda blank. I remember being in the lair and then..." Raph trails off, staring, taking in Donnie, the lab. For a moment he swears he sees fear in Donnie's eyes, a panic. The pain rears it's head again, sharp and swift. Raph groans and rubs at his temples, his eyes slamming shut and watering again. He rubs at them trying to clear away his blurring vision.

Donnie is pulling his hand away a penlight flashing before Raph's eyes.

"Ow ow geez! Donnie what are you doing?"

"Looking you over again." The genius says, pulling Raph over to a stool and forcing him to sit. "You took a pretty good hit to the head last night."

Donnie is cold, clinical, almost robotic, his movements seem more like going through the motions as he pokes and prods. It doesn't feel like there's any care in his ministrations. Raph doesn't feel like he has any bruises, no open wounds, all the pain, the stabbing burning, twisting fire is on the inside. It's behind his eyes, a burrowing spike of intense white hot light that pulses with his heart beat.

In rushed motions Donnie herds him away from the door and the desk, away from the mess of Mikey's doing. He pushes Raph to the cot he previously vacated.

"I want to keep an eye on you for a bit so stay here.” He says by way of an explanation. 

Reluctantly Raph settles into the cot, laying back and staring at the too familiar ceiling. Only something's off. It's quiet again, and has that crack in the ceiling always been there? He's certain it has but it just feels, different. Wrong but right.

Raph turns away from the ceiling and the crack. He focuses on the lab around him but finds that Donnie is gone. He never heard him leave and the lights? When did they go off? The floor and the desk are still in complete disarray. It's not like Donnie, he thinks, this just isn't right. He's brother's more of a neat freak when it comes to his lab then Leo organizing his Space Heros VHS tapes. 

The more Raph dwells on it the more wrong it all seems. Everything is just...off...

His heart starts hammering, and the pain returns behind his eyes but he knows it's important. He knows it means something. In the dark the lab is all looming shadows and tortured figures. The puddle of chemicals is dark, too dark. The tang of copper clings to his nose....it's the smell of....

"Do you remember then?"

Raph jumps, Leo's sudden appearance startling him. He pulls in a deep breath, staring at his own hands, hands he doesn't recognize. Not anymore...not after... Flashes of ruby drops splattered over emerald skin. Voices low and whispering invading the quiet... 

Leo's hand on his shoulder feels warm, comforting and utterly transient. "It's okay."

"It's not okay" Raph shouts, "It's not! How could I? To..to them.... To you?!"

"You don't have to leave here Raph. You don't have to remember what happened. As long as you're here you can make this place anything you want."

"Yeah...I know..."

Forsaking his usual place on the hard pit bench, Raph flops on the nearest beanbag. Mikey is already comfortable, stretched out over three of them, a huge bowl of popcorn at the ready. While Donnie is leaning against another beanbag, laptop over his crossed legs. Even on movie night the genius can never stay away from the net for long. Raph knows he'll pay attention though, he envies his brother's multitasking abilities. 

And Leo? He's to close to the TV and Raph swears he's going to burn out his eyeballs.

"Hey dork!" He yells, "Down in front! And why'd we let you pick the movie again?"

Leo scoots backward a bit, closer now to his brothers, grin bordering on manic. "Because last week we were subjected to that ridiculous Kung fu movie of Mikey's,"

"Hey!" Mikey pouts.

"and the week before was your slasher flick. So it was either space heroes 3 or Donnie's educational documentary."

"I still don't see what's so bad about watching Cosmos, it's fascinating." Donnie complains.

"Because that guys voice puts me to sleep." Raph says, sarcasm dripping from every syllable. 

"He was the leading researcher of his time when it came to--"

"Shhhh!" Leo snaps, finger to his lips as he hits play. Donnie rolls his eyes and goes back to focusing on the laptop before him as the opening music starts. The popcorn makes the rounds, although Mikey has to be physically separated from the bowl on more then one occasion as the movie rolls on to it's inevitable conclusion.

Sadness wells at the edges of Raph's mind and he pushes it aside, focuses on the here instead of the now. Tonight they stayed in, no one came to the lair and told them there was trouble, that they were needed. Tonight and every night after they're safe and they always will be in memory.

**Author's Note:**

> I wrote this just after the mind controlled Raph episode was announced. :) I am not responsible for any feels this may have caused. Thanks for reading!


End file.
